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RBB conference room: Complicated processing
Photo: Christophe Gateau / dpa
Since August 2022, the Attorney General's Office has been investigating former director Patricia Schlesinger and four other executives.
In order to support the investigations and at the same time to protect itself legally, the public broadcaster has hired a whole group of lawyers after in-house research.
The costs for this have so far amounted to 1.4 million euros, according to a report by the RBB editors.
Since mid-July, the law firm Lutz/Abel from Munich and Hamburg has been examining faulty structures in the RBB, which were previously known in the press, and are also developing recommendations on how the shortcomings could be eliminated.
A total of 31 lawyers from four law firms billed hours worked from July to the end of November.
This emerges from documents that are available to the RBB.
Lutz/Abel alone accounted for one million euros for 20 lawyers.
The editors quote several legal experts who described the lawyers' calculations as "absurd and incomprehensible".
The vice dean and head of the law faculty of the Humboldt University, Martin Heger, expressed understanding that the RBB would get legal advice selectively, for example from labor lawyers because of the controversial service contracts.
But the commitment of 31 lawyers is a waste of radio contributions.
Uwe Hellmann from the University of Potsdam expressed a similar tenor: "I don't think that the effort is in reasonable proportion to the return if you employ a whole army of lawyers for allegations that are rather manageable in the matter."
So far, the yield has actually been manageable, according to the RBB text.
In the interim report before the Broadcasting Council in October 2022 - after a three-month review - there was not much more than what had already become known.
Broadcasters told SPIEGEL that they saw no other option than to seek external legal advice.
You didn't want to expose yourself to the accusation of keeping something under the covers.
mike
